


Collision

by Fancypond (ozbian)



Category: Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-21 04:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3678171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozbian/pseuds/Fancypond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day Night Vale wakes up a different place, but it hasn't really  changed. </p><p>One day the Kids and the Trolls arrive in Night Vale, and it's not too bad at first, but they were made for war and it will find them again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> So this story is more about me exorcising the plotbunnies feasting on my brain-stem than producing a coherent narrative and honestly if I were some stranger reading this I would probably nope out after the first few paragraphs, that said if you're enjoying this or if you have some corrections or suggestions please feel free to drop me a comment

_The sun is hidden, time is unmoored and the rain falls hard with intent to drown us all._

Welcome to Night Vale.

***

Cecil stares out the window, his head cocked to the side like a curious, hungry bird. The rain seems to be falling faster. There are bits of debris being swept down the street at an extremely rapid rate. The water looks darker than it did before, and he wonders if it's deeper or just a darker colour now. There are occasional bipedal shadows streaking beneath the surface. The water is at an odd angle to a row of windows just above the flow, like how orange milk usually looks relative to the tilted bottle just before he pours it over his morning cereal. Maybe it's the building, though - it's not in its usual shape, it's lumpy and unfamiliar, with a bunch of smallish windows arranged in the shape of a godseye.

A silhouette moves behind the window, also unfamiliar, and not because he has not seen a shape like that before, but because he has, earlier today, and the physical forms of the non-standard bipedal individuals of Night Vale are usually unique.

"Huh," he says, then gathers a new Intern, Reliable Colleague (he says his name is aspirational?), and sends him off to collect the inevitable pronouncement from the Council.

***

_Greetings, listeners. I hope that you're all staying dry or, failing that, keeping well away from any stockpiles of alkali metals._

'Oh, Carlos,' Cecil thinks, to the brain ghost in his head. 'Remember that time you temporarily blinded me with science and unexpected chemical reactions?' Brain ghost Carlos smiles, but it isn't Carlos' smile, because brain ghost Carlos isn't real.

_Those of you who are more - sensitive, to the fluctuations of reality - may have been noticing some differences recently, like changes to the landscape, different coloured vehicles or clothing accessories, altered personality or morality in yourself or those closest to you, unexpected sensations in your extremities, an instantaneous change of location, cravings for things you were not previously aware existed, or unexpectedly being of a species previously unknown to you._

_The City Council has recently issued Notices regarding the official Night Vale timeline, and an update about the prophecy which the Sheriff's Secret Police may or may not be working to undermine. Those of you in low lying areas who have climbed to escape the rising water may have already spotted them - they're the runes shaped into a simple spirograph, glowing with a sickly green light, etched into the rooftops of many buildings throughout the town._

_Now, this is a great opportunity for those of you with boats, aquatic abilities or self-generated flight capability to participate in a family friendly scavenger hunt, combining the fun of hunting immobile and helpless prey with an opportunity to teach your children, charges and more intelligent pets about the civil responsibility of taking those steps necessary to find out what your government is trying to communicate to you._

_Our new intern, Regretful Collator, is traipsing over the skyline at the moment, taking pictures of all the Notices he can find. Call in and let us know if you find any, listeners, and we will send him your way._

_Here's a hint - there's a copy of the Notice on the rusted corrugated iron roof of Big Rico's, which is easily accessible from the pile of drums in the alley off to the right. They're really easy to spot, bright yellow with cheerful smiling skulls._

Cecil smiles to himself, because everyone in town knows about the spot - the alley next to Big Rico's is one of the few designated areas which are municipally approved for zone 1 make-outs. There are some blind spots in his memory of the many, many years he spent as a teenager, but that he remembers.

_Look, if you can I recommend you go and read this for yourself, it's in ancient runes and as we all learned in high school. everyone experiences those differently. There's always something lost in translation._

_But I'm aware that not everyone can go out there and experience the runes for themselves, there are those in our community who are particularly nonbuoyant, averse to open spaces, busy attempting to contain great unknowable powers which if unleashed may invoke the prophesied apocalypse which would kill every living thing in this iteration of the universe, the vision impaired, those who cannot comprehend the existence of written language, and I've also been informed that a number of our nocturnal staff have had to stay home today because of a ... cultural aversion to large bodies of water?_

Which is weird, because Cecil usually works during the day, so normally the nocturnal staff wouldn't be on at the same time as him anyway, but now he thinks about it, he doesn't feel like he slept for very long last night, and maybe the darkness outside isn't due to just the rainclouds and lingering miasma of despair?

_Also I've been informed that the Town Heralds, who would normally be responsible for making sure that every single citizen of Night Vale has received important Council notices no matter where they hide or how far they run, were recently decommissioned after multiple charges of public nuisance and instilling a false sense of security in some of our more light-sensitive citizens with their regular and reliable warnings of dawn's approach which led to an increase in incidents of incineration and of course the small plague of street cleaners, which I'm sure none of us want a repeat of._

Ugh, street cleaners.

_So, the Notice. To those intrepid citizens intent on seeking out the message for yourselves, although it might cause Station Management to become a bit displeased with me, I ask that you tune out now to avoid spoilers. Okay? Okay._

_... I've just received another text from our Intern, who haw located another spirograph, But I can't see the whole thing because the shot's been blocked by what could be either an art installation or an immense, pulsating, prehensile limb. Or both. Well, if there are any listeners out near the abandoned lumber mill, could you maybe see if you can snap a clearer picture? I do like the contrast between the timber roof and the runes' irradiated shimmer. And hey, perhaps you could join Intern Rigorous Carpenter behind the rather sturdy-looking barricade he seems to be erecting._

Cecil swipes back to an unobscured photograph of a notice which appears to have been etched into the papier mached album covers and plastic shards over Dark Owl Records

_Now, it's been awhile, but I'm pretty sure that this accent means the runes should be read in a friendly, casual tone with a hint of a growl and just a touch of underlying menace. Ahem._

 

 

> Hi everyone! So some of you may have recently noticed fluctuations in the unnameable fabric of the universe which may have caused significant and irrevocable changes to our home town! We're not entirely sure, but some guys we know from outside our reality think a few things have changed? We kinda have to take their word for it, since from our perspective things are as they have always been and nothing's really changed at all. But you know what this place is like, so better to be safe than sorry right?
> 
> Now we're sure that there's some of you with memories that are _wrong_. We feel kinda dumb saying this, but trolls exist, okay. They have always been here. They have always. Been. Here. If they weren't, then why would we have a state of the art brood-cavern, or be selling sauces specifically for grub stir fry, or have an elaborate system of underground caves connecting stores which are required to have blackout curtains? Also in existence are carapacians, lusii, lizard people, and many other inexplicable species who absolutely do exist and probably even evolved on this planet! Not angels, though. Never angels.

_Okay listeners, so now I'm kind of confused. Because I thought lizard people were always around...Of, of course I'm sure that everything the Notice said exists does in fact exist and has always existed, but I'm particularly sure that there's always been lizard people._

 

 

> If you're having _any trouble_ comprehending the reality in which we exist, there is a current timeline available at the Town Hall for you to check against your _imperfect and unreliable memory_. Yes, that means despite any memories you may have to the contrary, we did not in fact fund the building of a harbour and waterfront district in the desert. It would make no sense at all for that to have happened, we thought we made this clear, why is this still an issue. We also did not spend millions on the development of a bridge. And Pink Floyd is objectively the most talented and charming musician ever to exist and is also the creator of french toast. It's all there on the timeline.
> 
> Anyway, if you notice any discrepancies, or if you notice your friends or loved ones are displaying opinions and memories incompatible with the timeline, please notify the Sheriff's Secret Police or just go out to the secret shared facility located at the halfway point between Night Vale and Desert Bluffs, where our docterrorists and rectiflayers would _be pleased to help you address your issues_.
> 
> Oh, yeah. About the prophecy. So we neither confirm nor deny that we are seeking to avert or cause the apocalypse described in the prophecy that caused our ancestors to found this town in the first place and may underlie all policy and motivations of the Sheriff's Secret Police, so all you 'secret' society types need to settle down.
> 
> And this has nothing to do with the alteration of our reality which didn't actually happen because none of us perceived it, okay, but there's now like an 85% chance of meteorites in the next few weeks.
> 
> We do not know why it started raining. We do not know why it won't stop raining.

Oh hey, burning sky portents of doom! Carlos doesn't believe in astrology, which Cecil usually thinks is adorably foolhardy of him, but now he's just a bit sad they can't playfully argue about what falling stars mean.

_Well, I suppose that it would be a good idea to keep your glow-cloud rated umbrellas handy for the next few weeks. I mean, a meteorite can't be that much worse than the carcass of a bison falling from several hundred feet in the air, right? And anyway, the Glow Cloud, all hail the Glow Cloud and its shining wisdom and its cadaverous benediction all hail, is still involved in some pretty tense negotiations regarding expanding the Night Vale School District to include some lucrative dimensionally adjacent areas, so it's probably a good idea to keep it handy just in case._

_Hey, maybe we'll get some of the giant beings from Carlos' current dimension attending at our local schools. That would be so neat!_

_And now, it's time for. The Weather._

***

Cecil checks his phone, just in case the buzz inexplicably stopped working, but no. He stands up and walks over to the window again. He watches the windows of the neighbour across the river, and sees a small blur of black and grey with flickers of red and orange dart past, followed by a hulking white insectoid creature. "Awww," he says, as they chase each other past the window again and finally the little troll trips and the ... lusus? swoops down, hoists its charge over its head with an appendage almost as large as it is, and carries the kicking, squirming, weapon-flailing bundle of adorable rage away into the depths of their home.

He looks down to the water, and sees a white fin breaking the surface above a bulbous shadow, lazily following the current.

The current, which appears to be flowing towards the non-existent Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area. Oh wow.

***

_... Listeners, I was going to let this go, and I would never gainsay the Council or verbally state an opinion at odds with their express or expressly implied view, but I think it would be boring if everyone perceived the same reality. Not that I know anyone who perceives reality differently to that stated on the official timeline! Which I haven't had the opportunity to read over recently, but Intern Resistant Caterer took a few photos for me this morning. It's really quite detailed, I'm just looking at it now and huh..._

Oh ew, really?

_I'M SURE IT COMES AS A SURPRISE TO NO ONE, listeners, that Night Vale and Desert Bluffs were founded at the same time, and our fates are inexplicably intertwined, and that trolls are adorable grey-skinned cat/bug/lizard bipeds with horns on their heads, and our mayor ... Determined Crusader? ... has been missing for two weeks._

Oh, no. But he'd only spoken to Dana ... well, it had been awhile, hadn't it

Incoming portents of doom and a missing friend and Mayor really did not bode well at all.

Ugh. Positive note, positive note, come on Cecil, positive note ... 

_It seems like our new intern, Ruffian Conqueror, has returned mostly intact and unscathed, except for a rather rakish scrape along the carapace just beneath his left eye. It really is a pity that you cannot enjoy his photographs at home, listeners, they are remarkably well-framed and seem to have avoided capturing any spirits at all, which any amateur photographer can tell you is a neat trick in our ghost hub of a town._

_Listeners. The prophecy may be another step closer to fruition, for good or for ill, but think about this._

_We have always had more friends and neighbours than we'd thought, and in the desert it is raining._

_Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight._


	2. Chapter 2

_If at first you don't succeed, do the same thing over and over and over again. As you sink gradually into the quicksand of madness and despair, you shall find satisfaction in knowing that the strange, malevolent beings who are always watching have learned nothing from you._

_Welcome to Night Vale._

***

Megan Wallaby sighs, and delights in her ability to sigh.

She know she should be paying attention, and normally she would be, because Care and Feeding of Weaponry is now one of Megan's best classes. She has recently discovered that she likes being good at school, and not just because good students are less likely to be culled. 

But she's tired, because there were unseen figures wailing in ancient tongues in the street outside her home last night, and the words which she did not understand caused unpleasant images to pop into her head, of reaching shadows and falling fire and ominous unstoppable things, which of course she was used to dreaming of before the body-transplant, and they stopped while the water rained, but when the rain stopped and the flood waters receded the figures came and their keens pierced her ears like an ovipositor whose eggs hatch into headaches and sleeplessness. 

She is also a bit worried, because her secret best friend Andari Kirtan didn't come to school today, but Megan is also a little bit relieved because she had been planning to finally tell him about the best friend thing today, and trolls can get weird about that. 

There's a slight clatter and Megan looks to see that Ester and RK have already put down their etching tools, so she hurriedly finishes taking her notes.

When she's done Ms Frobisher is still staring sightlessly at nothing so Megan fiddles with her tool case for a moment, then looks up at the murderhole to check the time. She's not sitting directly under it, of course. Any student who lasts more than two weeks knows better than that. 

In the teeny sliver of twilight sky visible from the opening, she can see that the stars have changed, which is usually alright because there's this one steady star that always moves the same way and you can tell when class is about to end because the star will be one Megan-span above the outer wall, but now she can't see it.

Instead Megan sees a bird perching right on top of the outer wall. She frowns and sits and watches for awhile, but the bird continues to perch, and not be taken out by any of the hidden snipers which, everyone knows, are stationed outside the school observatory. 

There's a sudden harsh chime of steel against stone, and Megan looks to see Ms Frobisher lift the scythe above her head, then bring it down in a wild swing, scraping sparks against the wall. She strikes the wall several more times, then slowly brings the blade up to her eyes. She sights along it, then smiles her needle-teeth smile.

"Scythes must be sharpened regularly using a grade two whetstone and be blooded at least once per month," she says, and there's a sudden rustle as her classmates retrieve the necessary equipment from their strife-specibi, or cautiously walk to the front of the room to choose one of the school owned scythes Ms Froshiber had brought in a portable weapons rack. 

Donnie is still using his exploding-snap specibus, and Megan snorts to clear her nose of the scent of sulfur.

The schick, schick, schick and the hot smell of stone on metal drifts through the  classroom, and Megan has to concentrate, because using her elbow still isn't quite natural yet, but she listens to Ms Frobisher's instructions, and watches her hands, and still finishes earlier than most of the class.

Megan looks up again and sees that the bird still has not moved. It is perched with a bent back and its head is craning upwards, staring up at the sky.  

'For a bird it is kinda human-shaped,' Megan thinks, but her Mom says she should think of people as what they believe they are, because that's more real than bodies and stuff, and anyway it's polite. Like herself, when she was a hand but also Megan, or Ms Sultan, who is a nice lady even though she looks like a river rock, but not like the Apache Tracker, who is disrespectful and a "racist asshole".

Plus it does has wings.  

Maybe if she stares for long enough, it will feel her gaze upon it, get uncomfortable and leave, and not get shot. She hopes so, because Megan likes animals. They never make fun of her, not even before she got her body-graft. 

Well, except for that nest of tarantulas down the road, but Mom says they haven't been taught any better and that she shouldn't try to squish them unless they exceed Level 4 on the VHUPPCKBPSTLWITBH Scale*.  

Megan feels a poke in her side, and flinches and whirls around in her seat. She sees Ester, seated at the desk next to hers, and there is a regulation 3 feet of space between their desks but Megan can see that Ester has a long steel ruler in her hand. Megan shifts back in her chair and gets her hands under the desk. 

"What?" she signs.

Ester glances at a spot above Megan's head, gives her a meaningful look, then looks up again. Megan is still a bit unused to the practicalities of lines of sight, and it takes a moment to realise that Ester is asking what she's been looking at.

"someone on the wall" she signs. "not shot"

Ester frowns. She spells out "t e s t?" with her hands, and Megan shrugs. She wishes she could roll her eyes but hasn't quite learned the trick yet. Ester thinks everything is a test and gets ridiculously twitchy about anything out of the ordinary. 

Megan glances to the front of the classroom, and sees that Ms Frobisher is busy hissing with disapproval at a carapacian in the second row.

She taps her fingers against the desk in quick succession, then makes herself stop twitching and frowns a bit instead. It's hard to remember to use facial expressions. 

Megan leafs through the thin metal pages of her notebook, sighs a little, then glances up at the murderhole again. 

The bird is now standing upright, and its edges seem a bit sharper now, though its form is still a bit hidden by the wings. 

The stars have changed again, they look closer together and a bit brighter. The bird lifts its arm and it seems to be shading its eyes. 

She hears the crack of a rifle, and the bird is gone.

There's a moment of silence then a quick clatter as her classmates drop whetstones and seize the handles of their scythes, and after a moment Megan follows suit.

Everyone is still for a moment, listening, then there is the distant, slowly building howl of dogs and hooded figures, and the discordant beep and whistle of car horns.

A growl reverberates through the building and hums against their feet, and Ms Frobisher tilts her head to the side and places a hand against one ear, her eyes unfocused but intent.

Megan glances towards the murderhole and catches a glint of colour. The stars are bright enough now to cast shadows in the room. 

The growling stops and Ms Frobisher's head snaps back into alignment. She makes a clicking sound combined with a sharp hand gesture, and everyone quickly falls into position, ready to proceed to the nearest shelter. 

Later, Megan will idly wonder about the bright orange bird, but she lives in Night Vale, and stranger things are happening. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The Verbal Harassment, Unwanted Physical or Psychic Contact, Kidnapping Beloved Pets or Siblings and Thinking Loudly with Intent to be Heard Scale.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Third chapter in and finally a Homestuck character arrives in Night Vale

You hear a distant honk, and not even the horrorterrors enveloping your mind with tendrils of despair and rage and hopelessness can keep you from waking.

You can feel that the ground is warm and smooth under you, and above you there is empty space where your ~~comforting~~ camouflaging pile should be.

You take a breath and then another. The air is free of the stale musk you’re used to, it doesn’t catch in your gastube like the fetid, rebreathed, tension and alien hormone ridden atmosphere of the asteroid.

It smells familiar, like brine and dead fish, and you’re in a crouch and staring around yourself ~~frantically~~ assessingly before you consciously recognise the stench of the sea.

You are in a crater.

The ground is slippery under you and the sides gradually rise to a height above your head. They are as smooth as the surface of your bloodrivers on LOPAH and you’re too fucking short to see over the top. You can see glimmers of light reflecting and realise how light it is out here and how the parasite infested, shit trodding, grub-sucking _fuck_ did you forget that the sun was a thing to be worried about? You ~~flail~~ ~~spasm~~ INSTINCTIVELY flinch, okay, then hunch down on yourself, trying to shield your exposed limbs and face behind your shirted back.

But your skin isn’t tingling and the air is still cool, so after a minute you get a bit embarrassed, because you can’t die permanently in dream-bubbles, right?

But not too embarrassed, because there was that time you got caught in that dreambubble, and when you looked down you found yourself standing on a depravedly soft concupiscent platform, upon which was a subjugglator puppetkind reclined in the most casually seductive pose you’ve seen outside of flushed softpron, and it’s eyes stared right at you, and when you looked away you swear to gog you saw it twitch from the corner of your eye, and past you may be a fucking asshole but you can’t really blame him for doing an actual acrobatic flip off the railing.

You can however blame him for his shitty aim and spatial awareness which caused you to land on a desk and break your nerve pillar and forced you to use your arms to pull yourself out of that hellish musclebeast idol infested respiteblock dragging your useless legs behind you and staring fixedly at the puppetkind arm hanging over the end of the platform because you knew that if you stopped it wouldn’t be _there_ when you looked back. But even though you got better once the dreambubble finally popped, you still had stabbing debilitating pain in your back for cycles, and the memories, and sometimes catching Dave looking at you with pity in the twitch of his mouth like you were some helpless fainting waif prince palebait which you did not enjoy at all.

So fuck it, you are not embarrassed at all to be concerned about being burned to panfuckingly incendiary pain and helplessness in the light of a raging sun.

But in the direction you are staring, the sky is dark. You turn gradually and then stare at distant floating globes radiating light. It’s bright enough that you cast an undefined shadow in the glass behind you, a patch where there are no glimmers. But there is no tingle in your limbs, no ache in your eyes, and you don’t know if this is some alien’s chucklefucked idea of what day is but you’re not burning to crispy corpsemeat.

From the direction of the darkness you can hear the gentle, sinister shoosh of waves on sand. From the direction of the lights you hear a distant sound of beeping and honking.

The honking is not ominous or unsettling enough to be Gamzee’s.

You wonder if anyone else has been caught in this bubble with you.

You wonder why you don’t remember what you were doing before sleep seized you.

You realise that you standing around in this indefensible and difficult to escape hole like a sitting quackfiend.

Digging your claws into the brittle glass is a bad idea, as it breaks beneath your hands and the shards dig into your phalanges. There is warm sand underneath and while it is firmly packed it is hard to grip. You are hyper aware of the faint smell of your own blood. You try to keep your hands flat against the surface and climb by digging a booted feet in, hard, then stepping up and digging in the next. You can hear sand slide through the holes you leave behind. Then you slip and grasp with your hands, and you slide for a handspan and your hands burn like someone pissed on their cuts, but then you stop sliding and shake the sand from your face, and you start climbing again. You imagine the sand sliding out beneath your hands and leaving your feet to be supported only by a hollow shell of fragile glass, and you imagine the glass higher up crumbling beneath the unsupported weight of sand, and you think of being buried under a million tiny little grains of rock until the bubble pops, and you snarl and tell yourself to shut the fuck up because you seriously do not need this shit, and climb a little faster.

Eventually you get high enough to see over the edge of the crater, and you pause just for a moment to look around.

Your night vision may be a bit weaker than most trolls, you’ve never been stupid enough to test it against someone else because revealing a weakness to another troll is just fucking dumb and by the time you realised it was an issue you weren’t an innocent pan-rotted little wriggler anymore, but it’s good enough for you to see a little into the distance.

Nearby you can see a shape standing tall and slim with several limbs.

You pull yourself up over the ledge and fall into a crouch, drawing a sickle from your grief deck.

“Hey, fuckass!” you growl, because if this is some sentient asshole alien they just ignored you while you nearly drowned in sand, and if it’s a beast you want to scare it off, and if it’s a tree or a rock and you’re making an idiot out of yourself there’s no one here who cares. Also you’re rationally and justifiably pissed off and in pain and there is sand in your pants blackflirting with your junk, okay?

But the thing doesn’t move, and when you ~~stomp~~ stride aggressively forward you can see that it is brownish and fuzzy looking and embedded in the ground and doesn’t have a face. You decide that it’s a weird alien tree and hope that you have not ended up in the dreambubble of troll Salvador Dali.

The sandy ground is mostly bare. The trees are the most noticeable thing nearby, but you can also see some small balls of twigs and stray leaves that might be bushes, and small clumps of tough looking grass spikes sticking up from the ground.

Around the crater there are shards of stone and some craggy boulders with skidmarks in the sand leading back to your crater.

You tread cautiously to the lip of the crater, then kick some sand down over where you climbed in a half-assed attempt to hide any flecks of blood. Then you look down at your bloody hands, sigh and stamp hard at the glassy verge until the top section breaks free sand cascades from under your feet down into the hole and you step back. down into the crater. 

You stare at your hands again and wish that you were able to stomach the inherent fish-douchiness and get a pair of gloves. You pull a spare shirt from your deck, tear it up, then awkwardly tie it around your hands. You test the grip on your scythe, and it is shitty but workable.

There is sand as far as you can see in three directions. In the other there is just water and sky. To your left there is nothing but flat land. But to the right you can see something long and flat just above the surface, skirting the very edge of the water, and structures with oddly straight lines.

In the direction of the light orbs you can see a mess of straight lines and sharp angles and several tall towers breaking through at the top. You cannot tell how far away it is.

There aren’t many options for shelter if the sun rises while you’re still here.

You look towards the quiet sea and feel wary, because you may be a mutant but you’ve lived as a landdweller all your life and warinesss of the water is ingrained and your digestive sack doesn’t understand that this is a sea in a dreambubble with a version of some alien’s planet and there’s probably nothing more dangerous in there than toothfish.

“Hi there!” says a chirpy human voice.

You ~~twist around like the protagonist in troll Exorcist~~ turn smartly to face this new potential threat.

Behind the weird alien tree there is something moving.

A strange human steps out and you jump backwards.

Rose organised some comparative discussions of biology in the early days of the meteor. And by impressive use of verbal snares, emotional manipulation on par with an ashen-quadranted troll Casanova and politely enlisting the assistance of Kanaya who at the time was in the first throes of her interspecies flush crush, which Kanaya had been so awkward and angsty about that you nearly offered to talk to her about it.

(but you did not want anything to do with sloppy interspecies makeouts and anyway Kanaya is a strong, classy broad and you were sure that once she got over the thing with Rose she wouldn’t need you anymore, and you would not sully the sacred bond of moirailegiance with a one night stand or unbalanced relationship. Past you had a bit of an improvised prodding implement up his wastechute. You like to think that you’ve relaxed a bit since then.)

So you know that adult humans are only a bit bigger than your humans, and that the bodies of humans keep changing as they get older instead of having set stages like you do, and Rose and Dave seemed delighted to share details, and it was disgusting and sloppy which is probably why you never managed to scrape it out of your thinkpan (that and the non-expressions on Dave’s face when Rose went into detail about human reproduction).

The man is taller than you, but he is gangly. He looks too small for his skin, which you think is a sign of age. He looks like a typically squishy human. His hair is grey and weirdly tidy and his face is furry.

He is wearing something that looks like a cullinary apron.

In one hand is a pair of silver scissors, and in the other is something black and furry.

He steps forward and you step back.

You have never met an adult before, but this is a squishy human and not a carapaced adult troll. You don’t know how to react but you don’t think he’s a threat.

“Hi,” you say awkwardly.

He is looking at your head intently, and he is smiling very wide, which displays many blunt human teeth, and pulls the loose skin of his face into a different shape. The irises of his eyes are brown and their schlera are that ghostly human white.

He’s not a ghost?

The friendly/threatening smile reminds you a bit of John, but the hungry look in the man’s eyes is weirdly trollish.

You guess he’s staring at your horns. You hate people staring at your horns. Rude. You scowl at him.

You want to leave this strange human alone in this strange dreambubble and go find out if anyone else is here because if they are they’re probably in the middle of or about to kick off a shit storm somewhere and, well. There’s a sea at your back and you don’t have anyone here to watch it for you. There’s people other than your lusus willing to watch out for you now and you're spoiled as a fuck and probably losing your edge but it’s good. You like it.

Except now you’re alone and you’re getting twitchy.

But none of the others have talked about encountering a human in the dreambubbles that wasn’t Dave, Rose, John or Jade, or their dancestors or lusii. You should try and figure out what he is, you decide reluctantly.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” the man asks, without looking away from your head.

You human-shrug.“The game likes making me jump through its flaming death loops like a barkbeast desperate for grubsnacks and its friends not to die.”

The man laughs and says, “Wow, you kids take those LARPING games seriously, huh. Well, I suppose it’s good training.”

You squint at him, because that laugh reminded you of John again, except it doesn’t sound like John’s laugh at all, just more like his than like Rose’s laugh (she snickers) or Dave’s laugh (who somehow laughs with no emotion or expression in it. Hah. Hah.) or Jade’s laugh (she giggles. Loudly).

He’s still staring at your head.

“Do you know Egbert?” you ask straight out, because you are the master of interrogation, it is you.

“The name doesn’t ring any bells,” he says, “but if they live in town I’ve probably cut their hair!” The man smiles again, but it’s smaller and dreamier and doesn’t creepily distort his face. “I’ve touched the hair of every person in the area.”

“Everyone?” Huh. Maybe no one else got stuck in this bubble, since the man has all his limbs, even if he sounds highblood insane.

“Well, everyone in town up until last year,” the man said.

His hands move, and you glance down to see him smoothing a finger along the edge of his scissors.

“You have lovely hair,” he says, and takes a step forward. You step back again, and glance around. You wish there was someone there to exchange a freaked out ‘what the fucking fuck’ look with. “You must be new. I never forget a tress.”

You show your teeth and shift your grip on your sickle.

“Have you seen any other new people?”

“No,” he says, distractedly. ” But I heard the radio whispering on the dry desert wind earlier tonight. There’s been some new arrivals in town.” The man sighs with his whole body, and rubs the furry thing in his hand against his temple. You see the strands of fur come apart in strands, and realise the man is not holding something furry, but a handful of hair. The man looks guiltily down at the strands in his hand, then strokes it back into order.

 “It’s been so long,” he whispers, "since I've been home." There’s a glint of water in his eye.

 He suddenly falls to his knees, and raises his hands over his head. “Oh great unholy darkness whose fragments dwell within the heart of every man, why did I do it? Why did I cut off that man’s perfect hair? Why did I disturb that alluring coiffure?”

... He looks busy, and turned inward, and you’ve reached the limit of insane, sour-smelling fuckery you’re willing to put up with for today. So you push down a confused feeling of guilt and back away to a safe distance.

Then you turn in place, wondering where you should go.

You have no idea when or if dawn will come. You could look at the nearby buildings, which have the advantage of being close but the disadvantage of being right next to the ocean. Or you could go to that maybe town beneath the distant lights though you have no idea how long it will take you to get there and you can’t rely on finding shelter along the way.

You feel something tug against your scalp, and you pull away, whirling around.

The man looks at you with a delighted smile on his face, and he is holding a hank of troll hair beside his scissors.

“Just a trim,” he says happily, and. That guy just had a blade near your face, and you didn't hear him coming, and he is quietly insane like several gagged highbloods stuffed into a garment tumbling appliance, and this is a really unsettling dreambubble (you're not sure it's a dreambubble) and you will be fucked with a shit encrusted culling fork while singing Don’t Cry for Me Al-ter-nia (troll Evita is beautiful and evocative underrated, okay?) before you will stay in a strange abandoned building in the desert with this guy hanging around.

He dodges your first few swings, but you feint then manage to hook your scythe around his ankle and yank, knocking him down and cutting into his tendon, hopefully hobbling him. But before you pull back he crows with delight and you feel another sharp pull against your scalp followed by a shallow slash of pain.

You leap back and he doesn’t follow. Instead he stands on one leg, a big chunk of your mane raised above his head like a trophy at some wriggler pit-fighting championship and howls his victory to the sky. He isn't reacting to the pain at all. 

You growl then take off towards the town.

“Tell them Tully the Barber sent you!” the man yells after you. “Out at the Sand Wastes, kids and cactuses half off with any adult haircut!”

You run faster.

%MCEPASTEBIN%


End file.
